#random ig post

She pointed at her coffee.

Black.

No milk.

No sugar.

And she said something I think about every single day: "I stopped adding sugar to things that were bitter."

I thought she was talking about coffee. She wasn't. She called it The Black Coffee Rule.

She said most people spend their lives sweetening things that don't deserve it.

- Bad relationships. They add sugar. Tell themselves it's not that bad.

- Wrong jobs. They add sugar. Convince themselves it'll get better.

- People who drain them. They add sugar. Make excuses. Keep tolerating. The sugar makes it drinkable. But drinkable isn't the same as good.

Here's the part that hit me: The most successful people don't add sugar. They taste things as they are - and if it's bitter, they stop drinking.

When she said that, I looked at my own life. I thought about everything I'd been tolerating because I'd made it sweeter.

- The friendships I'd dressed up as "complicated" instead of calling them draining.

- The situations I'd labelled "challenging" instead of admitting they were wrong for me. I wasn't being patient. I was being poisoned slowly - one sugared sip at a time.

Here's what I know now:

You're allowed to stop sweetening things that are bitter.

You're allowed to taste the truth of what you're tolerating.

You're allowed to put the cup down and walk away.